Sacred Stone (Oregon Files 2)

“Yes, sir,” the men said in unison.

Ten minutes later, with fifty-pound packs on their backs, they started up the mountain.

IN A TOWN where beautiful women abound, at age forty-nine Michelle Hunt still caused men to turn their heads. Tall, with hazel hair and blue-green eyes, she was blessed with a figure that required neither constant dieting nor endless exercise to appear trim. Her lips were full and her teeth straight, but it was her doelike eyes and flawless skin that gave the strongest visual impression. And while she was a beautiful woman, that was as common in Southern California as sunshine and earthquakes.

What drew people closer to Michelle was something that cannot be created by a surgeon’s knife, honed through dress or manicure, or developed through ambition or change. Michelle had that thing that made both men and women like her and want to be around her—she was happy, content and positive. Michelle Hunt was herself. And people flocked to her like bees to a flower in bloom.

“Sam,” she said to the painter who had just finished the walls in her art gallery, “you do such nice work.”

Sam was thirty-eight years old and he blushed.

“Only my best for you, Ms. Hunt,” he said.

Sam had painted her gallery when it had opened five years before, her Beverly Hills house, her condo in Lake Tahoe and now this remodel. And every time she made him feel appreciated and talented.

“You want a bottle of water or a Coke or something?” she asked.

“I’m okay, thanks.”

Just then an assistant called from the front of the gallery that she had a telephone call, and she smiled, waved and began to walk away.

“That’s a lady,” Sam said under his breath, “a lady.”

Walking to the front of the gallery, where her desk faced out onto Rodeo Drive, Michelle noticed that one of the artists she represented was coming through the front door. Here her amiability had also paid off in spades—artists are a fickle and temperamental lot, but Michelle’s artists adored her and rarely changed galleries. That and the fact that she had started her business fully funded had contributed greatly to her years of success.

“I knew today was going to be good,” she said to the bearded man. “I just didn’t know it would be because my favorite artist would be paying me a visit.”

The man smiled.

“Just let me take this telephone call,” she said, “and we’ll talk.”

Her aide corralled the artist toward an area with couches and a wet bar off to one side. As Michelle slid into her desk chair and reached for the telephone, the aide took the artist’s drink order and a few seconds later began packing ground espresso into the machine to draw him a cappuccino.

“Michelle Hunt.”

“It’s me,” a gravelly voice said.

The voice was one that needed no introduction. He had swept her off her feet when she was a young woman of twenty-one, freshly arrived from Minnesota, seeking a new life of fun and sun in 1980s Southern California. After an on-again, off-again relationship, necessitated both by his inability to be bound to a relationship, as well as his frequent absences for business, she had borne his son at age twenty-four. And though his name never appeared on the birth certificate—nor had Michelle and he actually lived together before or since—the pair had remained close. At least as close as the man allowed anyone ever to come.

“How are you?” she asked.

“I’ve been okay.”

“Where are you?”

It was the standard question she asked him to break the ice. Over the years the answers had ranged from Osaka to Peru to Paris to Tahiti.

“Hang on,” the man said easily. He stared at a moving map on a forward wall near the cockpit of his jet. “Six hundred and eighty-seven miles from Honolulu on the way to Vancouver, British Columbia.”

“Going skiing?” she asked. The sport was something they had enjoyed together.

“Building a skyscraper,” he answered.

“You’re always up to something.”

“True,” he noted. “Michelle, I called because I heard our boy has been sent to Afghanistan,” he said quietly.

Michelle had been unaware—the deployment was still secret and Chris had not been able to disclose his destination when he’d been dispatched.